The Angels Listened In was The Crests
seventh release, and their fifth for the Coed label;. the group were a mixed gender
and race vocal quintet from the Alfred E. Smith housing projects on the Lower
East Side of Manhattan. They consisted of four men and one woman, the racial
make up was three black, an Italian and a Puerto Rican. From this it would seem
that growing up on what were the new housing projects of their day did obviously
produce some value, not that this would not have happened had the project not
been built, it's just that some good came despite them. Housing estates, or a
better description might be rent barracks, was an imposition that the working
classes had to suffer throughout the twentieth century, and into the twenty
first, only today it is dressed up in very different language. What is worse
than the physical horror of these places, the real crime, is what is lost and
never replaced: the real community and sense of belonging that those who lived
and worked in the areas and neighbourhood's that these horrific ghetto's
replace. A sure sign that these urban monstrosities are built as ghetto's is
those who authorise, plan, design and finance them never live there themselves, nether
do they ever accept any blame for the crippling effect they have on the lives of
those who have to endure them. And when, after a period of usually two
generations, sometimes less, they are deemed to be at best a mistake and thoroughly
demolished so that no trace is left as proof, and another new hell is slapped up
or the land is just landscaped over and left for the 'people' to enjoy, are
those responsible, the architects, the planers and councillors ever called to
account for the destruction of so many lives?

The roofs of a variety of 1879-1901 Old Law tenements
(dumbbell-shaped airshaft, foreground), New Law (post-1901), and pre-Old Law
tenements are in this view shot from Oak Street and Catherine Street looking
southeast toward the Brooklyn Bridge, September 7, 1944. This entire area was
part of 22 acres cleared away to build Smith Houses

New Chambers Street, looking north from James Slip, March 13,
1945. These buildings (and streets) disappeared (and so, presumably, did the
pushcarts) in the clearance for the Gov. Alfred E. Smith Houses.

Smith Houses under construction -- the tall grayish buildings
to the right of the Brooklyn Bridge, January 19, 1950

Smith Houses nearing completion, seen from the Manhattan
approach to the Brooklyn Bridge, October 17, 1952